may see a flock of shore-birds that behave as one body: now they turn
to the sun a sheet of silver; then, as their dark backs are presented
to the beholder, they almost disappear against the shore or the
clouds. It would seem as if they shared in a communal mind or spirit,
and that what one felt they all felt at the same instant.

In Florida I many times saw large schools of mullets fretting and
breaking the surface of the water with what seemed to be the tips of
their tails. A large area would be agitated and rippled by the backs
or tails of a host of fishes. Then suddenly, while I looked, there
would be one splash and every fish would dive. It was a multitude,
again, acting as one body. Hundreds, thousands of tails slapped the
water at the same instant and were gone.

When the passenger pigeons were numbered by millions, the enormous
clans used to migrate from one part of the continent to another. I saw
the last flight of them up the Hudson River valley in the spring of
1875. All day they streamed across the sky. One purpose seemed to
animate every flock and every bird. It was as if all had orders to
move to the same point. The pigeons came only when there was
beech-mast in the woods. How did they know we had had a beech-nut
year? It is true that a few straggling bands were usually seen some
days in advance of the blue myriads: were these the scouts, and did
they return with the news of the beech-nuts? If so, how did they
communicate the intelligence and set the whole mighty army in motion?

The migrations among the four-footed animals that sometimes occur over
a large, part of the country--among the rats, the gray squirrels, the
reindeer of the north--seem to be of a similar character. How does
every individual come to share in the common purpose? An army of men
attempting to move without leaders and without a written or spoken
language becomes a disorganized mob. Not so the animals. There seems
to be a community of mind among them in a sense that there is not
among men. The pressure of great danger seems to develop in a degree
this community of mind and feeling among men. Under strong excitement
we revert more or less to the animal state, and are ruled by instinct.
It may well be that telepathy--the power to project one's mental or
emotional state so as to impress a friend at a distance--is a power
which we have carried over from our remote animal ancestors. However
this may be, it is certain that the sensitivenes